When tritium-containing contaminated water is generated by radioactive contamination, a separation operation of tritium is difficult due to properties of tritium, and an effective means of eliminating tritium except for low-temperature distillation and storage and sequestration that require a large-scale facility has not been found.
A simple storage method is hardly a realistic means. This is because organic substances such as sealing materials and metals in a structure of a storage tank are deteriorated due to an ionization phenomenon that is a characteristic of radioactively contaminated water, and high cost is required for storage and transport.
A method capable of mechanically treating tritium waste water containing various materials is significantly required.
For example, a procedure of applying a label to tritium by the Wilzbach method and then eliminating tritium is considered.
Specifically, a labeled compound known as an isotope in a medical field is synthesized from various kinds of organic compound due to the reactivity of tritium and utilized in medical site and study. The Wilzbach method that is a procedure known as tritium labeling has long history, and has various knowledge. This procedure is a method of bringing a tritium gas into contact with an organic compound for a certain time, and is basically simple. By this procedure, tritium-labeled compounds are produced from various organic compounds. Therefore, the reactivity of tritium is high in a sense. However, the Wilzbach method is effective under an environment where the radioactivity concentration is high and a radioactive substance is only tritium. Furthermore, the method has a problem in which various tritium-substituted organic compounds are simultaneously produced as impurities that are not a target compound, by decay of tritium in which a (ray is emitted.